The Thread and the Vibroblade
by annafan
Summary: Rogue One gave us lingering glances that could set the world on fire - but what was going on in Jyn's head? Canon, not a fix-it. Major spoilers for Rogue One. Jyn/Cassian


It hits her in the elevator. Those flashes she's been seeing. She knows now what they are. They are not isolated tricks her mind is playing. Instead, they hang like beads on a thread stretching into the future. Beads which catch the light, which glint and flash. Giving flashes of what's to come, what might be, what she'd like there to be. Flashes of what could have been. Flashes of what will never be.

-o-O-o-

At first she'd seen him as a mercenary. Doing the messy stuff, the stuff that even good politicians need bad guys to do. Plausible deniability. She'd known he'd killed a lot of people. Mostly bad people. But some good ones in the mix too. Sometimes he didn't know, it was a mistake, but she sensed that sometimes he did know but felt it had to be done, for the mission. For expediency. For survival. He's a man who could kill on an instinctive split-second impulse. For the greater good – whatever that might mean. The person on the other end of the blaster was still dead.

But even as she made this assessment, she recognised someone else in this description. She saw herself. Though she couldn't even make any grand claim about the greater good. (Not that she was sure she bought that anyway. She recognised self-deception, self-justification when she saw it.) Self interest, survival, that'd always been the bottom line for her. But however she cut it, his behaviour was not a million light years from hers. She'd killed. In self-defence, mostly. But maybe there were times when she'd drawn her blaster first. Because sometimes the best form of self defence is offence. She'd stolen to live. She'd stolen from people who probably didn't deserve it. Her hands weren't clean, her soul wasn't pure. She saw herself mirrored in him.

Didn't mean she liked him. In fact, she disliked him in part because she saw in him all the parts of herself she disliked. Or would do if she let herself think about it. Which mostly she didn't. Her life didn't allow for luxuries like a conscience.

-o-O-o-

Then she had the first flash, the first vision, if that's what you wanted to call it. Back in the shuttle after her father died.

She'd really hated him then. She'd screamed at him. He'd got as angry as she was. He told her he hadn't pulled the trigger. More than that, he'd _chosen_ not to pull the trigger. He'd disobeyed orders in not pulling the trigger. She'd still hated him.

But then he'd turned away from her, just for a moment, to bang his fist against the bulkhead in frustration. And in the midst of all her rage, somehow she'd glanced at his blaster, slung low on his hips, and then at those hips. And his ass. And she'd had one of those flashes of what might be. A flash of those same slim hips, naked, her own fingers digging into his firm ass. She almost took a step backwards, knocked by the force of raw desire. Heat flared in her belly, all the more devastating for its sheer unexpectedness. She was overwhelmed with need, the need to feel full and sated. The need to feel, and the need not to feel. To replace pain with raw sensation.

Then he turned back to face her. This man who had been tasked with killing her father. Who had had him in the sights of his sniper rifle. He looked her straight in the eye, like his take on how things had gone down mattered as much as hers. And suddenly she hated herself as well as him, hated her treacherous mind for the image, for the flash.

The second flash happened back at base. More of the same. She'd caught a glimpse of the way he'd run his hand through that mess of dark hair. And all at once it was her hands in his hair. Her hands holding his head. Holding his head down between her legs. His mouth hot and wet on her, his tongue circling her, buried in her – oh Force, she would never listen to the lilt of his accent again without imagining how skilful his tongue would be.

She tried to shake it off. It was the tension, and fear, and confusion – it was all getting to her. Wanting to get laid – the age old, primaeval response to danger. Again, she hated herself.

She tried to play them down. After all, what were they? Flashes of… what? Nothing more than tricks played by a mind under stress. Primal parts of the brain where the urge for flight, the urge to fight, the urge, more than that, the need to fuck, all those urges live in close proximity. That was all.

But the third flash was different. It was so much more dangerous, a moment where the universe tilted, where everything was out-of-kilter. She walked into the mess hall, early. He was alone at a table, steaming cup of kaffe between his hands. In the harsh overhead lights, every nuance of his face seemed outlined – the dark circles round his eyes, his sharp cheekbones, the shadows thrown onto his hollowed cheeks below. And the desire was there again. But not hot, needy, coiling in her belly, making her pulse race in her groin, making her wet. No, this was a more insidious desire.

Fucking, that was nothing, that was just what you did to get a momentary relief. But this, this desire to drag out the chair opposite him, to sit, to lean across the table – this was a level of need she couldn't handle. She knew what she wanted. To reach out and run her fingers along the scruffy stubble of his jaw. To smooth the frown line between his eyes. To let her thumbs settle in the hollows of his cheeks while her fingers cradled his temples. To draw him close and press her lips to his. But she knew it would take her to places she didn't want to go, couldn't go, didn't dare to go.

No emotions. Not after her parents at the age of six. Not after Saw when she was sixteen. She was Jyn Erso. She was self-contained. She didn't need anyone. Didn't want anyone. Didn't rely on anyone.

She'd got her food and sat at the furthest corner of the mess hall from him.

-o-O-o-

She handled the flashes of lust. Not that they went away. They were insistent, frequent, almost ever-present.

Like the moment the light and shadows on his body had shown her, just for an instant, the bulge below his blaster strap. In an instant, her mind had him in the shadows of the store cupboard, hands working clumsily on the fastenings of his pants, fabric half way down muscled thighs as her palm wrapped round his stiff cock. She could see the way his face became contorted with desire, his mouth open and panting. She saw the way he gasped and grunted as he spilled, hot and sticky over her fingers, then for a moment, the sharp angles of his face smoothed in satiated bliss.

Then there was the moment when she watched his fingers toy with a vibroblade hilt lying on the table. All at once her imagination placed them both in an out-of-the-way passage, those same long, clever fingers down the front of her pants, curling inside her as his thumb rubbed insistent circles that sent sparks before her eyes.

The lust was easy to handle. And if it got too much, there was always the option of her own fingers. It never took long – she seemed always on the brink. Always on the brink because of him. She hated that, but she could handle it.

The other flashes were the hard ones. The ones sparked by some glance of shared understanding, of shared experience. Comradeship. An uncanny sense that he knew where she was coming from, what fears she carried, knew what demons haunted her, because he was coming from the same place, carrying the same fears, chased by the same demons. Even the fear of being close to someone – she caught that in his face, half turned away, half reluctant to meet her eyes. These flashes weren't lust, they were something else. She'd catch a glimpse of his nose – that slightly quirky line, testament to someone else's fist – in profile. And suddenly in her imagination he was there, in the dark, profile illuminated by the dull red glow of the door light. His face, in profile, eyes closed in sleep, on the pillow next to her. Peaceful, soft. Hers.

No, no, a hundred times no. He was not hers. Nor could she be anyone's. People came into the world alone, they lived alone, they died alone. That was what life had taught her.

And these flashes, visions, intrusive thoughts, whatever. They were hers and hers alone. Figments of her imagination. Not shared. No, never shared.

-o-O-o-

Snatches of conversation...

"They were never going to believe you… but I do."

And then...

"I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad."

"Welcome home."

-o-O-o-

Then the moment when their eyes met, just for an instant, as they stood in the back of the shuttle, checking weapons. His eyes – how could they do that? How could they burn and yet comfort, ask and answer, see inside her yet accept what they found, all at the same time? There was no flash this time, no vision of what could be or would be… only the present moment. And that present moment was the best moment she'd known.

-o-O-o-

Now they're in the elevator, foreheads almost touching. He's hurt, hurt badly. She's not much better. She's seen the view from the platform. She knows their shuttle is blown to shit. She knows what's coming. And she sees the thread of flashing beads for what they are, illusions, stretching into a future she'll never know. She sees a vibroblade poised, shimmering, above the thread. It's ready to cut. It will cut soon. The beads, flashing, will scatter into the ether, into nothingness.

And now they're on the beach.

"Your father would have been proud."

They cling to each other. All the flashes of lust, they weren't the main thing. They were the symptoms, not the cause. The flashes of knowing the other person, of seeing them as they were, yet still wanting to cling to them… that was the cause. The prime mover.

She wishes she'd spoken. She knows she didn't have to.

Not an illusion at all. Just flashes of a lifetime of what might have been, compressed into the all-too-short time they had.

She can feel the muscles of his back, solid under her hands. His arms are round her. Her face is buried in his shoulder, her cheek pressed against the stubble on his. She was wrong: she will not die alone. She is home.

The blade descends. The thread is severed. The flashes become one blinding flash.

-o-O-o-

 _Author's Note: Gareth Edwards, how could you do this to me? Offer me the first decent new ship I've seen in years, a genuine pairing of equals, then snatch it from me. (How much of Hollywood's output consists of a male action hero whose meaningful emotional relationship is a bromance with his side kick, while the female lead is relegated to being a cardboard cut-out love interest with no real character of her own? You didn't do that, you did something so much better, so much braver.)_

 _And the worst thing? Gareth, you were right to kill them off. The story couldn't have gone down any other way. They were the star-crossed lovers fated to die in a blaze of glory. Anything else would have been a cop-out. And you were right to keep the love story to a few smouldering glances and leave the rest to our imaginations. Anything else would have been cheesy. Anything else would have turned Jyn into yet another cardboard cut-out love interest. Thank God you didn't._

 _But at the same time, my heart is broken. My lovely new ship, stolen from me before it could go anywhere… I shall shuffle off and play the Liebestod from Tristram and Isolde till the catharsis kicks in._


End file.
